TUNIS (Reuters) -Coastguards have retrieved 41 bodies from Tunisian waters, a national guard official said on Friday, raising the number of victims of migrant shipwrecks off the country’s coast to 210 in 10 days.
The bodies were in a decomposed state, suggesting they had been in the water for several days, said Houssem Eddine Jebabli told Reuters.
The cumulative total of fatalities was unprecedented over such a short period, he said.
Numbers of boats carrying migrants – most from sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Sudan – trying to reach Italy from Tunisia have risen sharply in recent months, in part due to a crackdown on departures by authorities in neighbouring Libya.
Tunisia is struggling to contain the surge, and some morgues are running out of space to bury the victims.
(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Writing by Tala Ramadan in Dubai; Editing by Jon Boyle and John Stonestreet)
